Carjacking Or Drug Shooting?

A Jury Hears Two Versions Of A Case: In One, The Defendant Shot Someone He Couldn't Pay For Drugs. In The Other, He Was Fending Off A Carjacker.

April 6, 1993|By Jill Jorden Spitz Of The Sentinel Staff

TAVARES — Was it an attempted carjacking or a drug deal gone bad?

Those are the questions jurors will be asked to answer this week when they hear the case of William Clyde Barnes, an Orlando man charged with shooting a passenger in his car, slamming into a parked car and then fleeing the scene.

Prosecutors said Barnes, 39, shot Darryl Harris in the arm and upper abdomen shortly before midnight Oct. 19 because he wanted to buy crack cocaine from Harris and a 17-year-old boy, but didn't have money to pay for the drugs.

However, a defense attorney for Barnes, a kitchen worker at an Orlando hospital, contends his client acted in self-defense after he became suspicious that his two passengers planned to steal his car.

Assistant State Attorney John Carnahan said Barnes pulled out a gun and shot Harris on Limit Street. The two men struggled for the gun as Barnes continued driving, finally swerving off the road and slamming into a car parked in a driveway, Carnahan said.

After the crash, Harris asked the homeowner to call police, Carnahan said, while Barnes ran down an alley and into an unlocked, enclosed front porch, where police found him sitting on a chair with the gun hidden under a cushion.

William Stone, the assistant public defender representing Barnes, told jurors Harris - not his client - produced the gun after Barnes refused to pull into a dimly lit parking lot.

After a struggle, Barnes wrestled the gun away and shot Harris before hitting the parked car, Stone said. He fled the scene out of fright, Stone said.

The trial will continue today.

In another courtroom, jurors will continue hearing the case of Collins Lamar Jackson, a 19-year-old Clermont fruit picker charged with raping a 6-year-old girl.

Assistant State Attorney Harold Southard said the attack occurred after Jackson entered the Clermont duplex the girl shares with relatives. Three toddlers and a sleeping 17-year-old aunt were in the room at the time, but the girl's aunt couldn't hear the screams over a window air conditioner, Southard said.

The girl identified Jackson as her attacker and was taken to Leesburg Regional Medical Center.

Still, there's no way Jackson could have assaulted the child, Assistant Public Defender T. Michael Johnson told jurors. Several people saw Jackson walking in the opposite direction of the alleged victim's house one to two minutes before the attack and they found him at a relative's house immediately after, Johnson said.

On the witness stand Monday, the child repeated her allegation that Jackson attacked her, but she also named another man she said had molested her.